Geoforum 63 (2015) 4043

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Critical review

City planning deciencies & climate change The situation in developed

and developing cities
Yosef Jabareen
Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, 32000 Haifa, Israel

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 4 May 2015
Received in revised form 15 May 2015
Accepted 24 May 2015
Available online 29 May 2015
Keywords:
Climate change
Developing cities
Developed cities
Planning
Plans
Adaptation
Mitigation

a b s t r a c t
In recent years, many cities have been grappling with climate change using master, strategic, and action
plans aimed at mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the anticipated, albeit uncertain,
impacts of climate change. Despite the monumental signicance of these plans, however, analysts have
yet to assess their nature and impact at the national and cross-national levels and their possible effect on
the environment and society. This paper examines these plans and asks critical questions about their
nature, vision, practices, and potential impact. Our sample is composed of twenty city plans from around
the world, where our ndings suggest that the vast majority of our contemporary cities continue to
employ traditional planning approaches. Furthermore, our cities are not doing all they can to fortify
themselves against uncertainties, climate change, and natural and environmental hazards. Our cities
may end up being deathtraps for millions of residents when disasters occur.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents
1.
2.
3.
4.

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
City visions and the challenge of climate change
Mitigation and adaptation: aspirations. . . . . . . . .
Conclusions and Policy Implications . . . . . . . . . . .
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1. Introduction
Both the international community and the climate-change
related discourse of local and international environmental civil
society look to cities to play a leading role in coping with climate
change (Jabareen, 2015; Parr, 2015; Isaksen and Stokke, 2014).
This expectation is premised on three main factors. The rst is
the scale of our contemporary cities, which will become home to
the vast majority of humanity in the coming decades. Whereas
only 29% of the earths population lived in cities in 1950, the gure
today has reached 51%, and by 2050 an estimated 70% of the global

E-mail address: jabareen@technion.ac.il

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.05.017
0016-7185/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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40
41
41
42
42

population (6.3 billion people) will live in urban areas (UNDESA,

2011). The second is the fact that todays cities have become a
major source of greenhouse gas emission and are responsible for
more than 70% of global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions
(WRI/WBCSD, 2014). The third is the phenomenal risk that climate
change poses to city populations and their social, economic, ecological, and physical systems (IPCC, 2014), impacting urban security and threatening the safety, the well-being, and the very
existence of urban people (Barnett and Adger, 2005; Leichenko,
2011; Rosenzweig et al., 2011). Without a doubt, cities as territorial entities represent one of the most promising vehicles and
scales for tackling the challenges of climate change today.

Y. Jabareen / Geoforum 63 (2015) 4043

Nonetheless, we currently lack both the empirical foundation

necessary to determine the scale of emissions reduction that cities
could potentially achieve, and sufcient evidence regarding past
progress indicating what emissions would or would not have been
had mitigation measures not been undertaken (Kennedy et al.,
2012). Another essential question is whether cities are contending
with climate change in a suitable manner by adequately reducing
their emissions and improving their readiness and adaptation measures to face the uncertainties and threats it presents. A critical
component of any answer to this question one which the literature has thus far overlooked must be an assessment of overall
city mitigation and adaptation policies, as reected in their master
and strategic plans. Our fundamental premise is that urban plans
possess an unrivaled potential to contend with the impacts of climate change.
In recent years, many cities have been grappling with climate
change using master, strategic, and action plans aimed at mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the anticipated,
albeit uncertain, impacts of climate change. Despite the monumental signicance of these plans, however, analysts have yet to assess
their nature and impact at the national and cross-national levels
and their possible effect on the environment and society. Thus
far, assessments have gone no further than reports on the climate
change-related activities of cities such as ARUP for the C40
(2011) and Castn et al. (2013)based on information not gleaned
from city plans, pertaining only to general activities and experiments conducted at the city level.
Some may argue that local governments operate under many
constraints, resulting in city plans that represent a bland path of
least resistance, and that we should, therefore, not put great faith
in the planning documents. I argue that planning should be taken
seriously in the context of climate change due to their unique
power to integrate policies of mitigation, adaptation, land use,
and other related urban measures within one statutory, binding
document: the city plan.
This paper examines recently issued inclusive, master, strategic,
and climate change action plans of cities around the world and ask
critical questions about their nature, vision, practices, and potential impact. Do they adequately address the risks and uncertainties
posed? How do they contribute to the worldwide effort to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions (see also Parr, 2015) More specically,
our analysis places special emphasis on the mitigation and adaptation policies that these plans propose. Our sample, composed of
twenty city plans from around the world, consists of large cities
all with large populations and eight that are state capitals from
the developed and developing world that have recently issued and
approved city plans for the coming decades.

2. City visions and the challenge of climate change

All the plans considered present long-term visions for their
respective cities that extend years and decades into the future.
The visions advanced by these cities say a lot about their seriousness regarding climate change issues. Our analysis indicates that
many cities do not take climate change into consideration when
planning their policies for the future. Some cities based their
visions primarily on the risks and uncertainties stemming from climate change, while others offered visions that address other
threats, such as those related to growth and urban expansion. In
PlaNYC, New York City calls for the development of a greener,
greater New York, and adequately addresses local and global climate change as a central concern of planning and future development. The Paris Climate Protection Plan (2007) conrms that the
City of Paris has committed itself to a factor 4 approach with
the aim of reducing total emissions by 75% of their 2004 level by

41

2050. With its target year of 2031, The London Plan (2011) asserts
that London should excel among global cities expanding opportunities for all its people and enterprises, achieving the highest
environmental standards and quality of life and leading the world
in its approach to tackling the urban challenges of the twenty rst
century, particularly that of climate change. Barcelonas Plan
20112020 strives to position Barcelona in approximately 2020
as a highly competitive city, and to improve the health of the planet by increasing energy efciency and reducing greenhouse gas
emissions.
Other cities, however, completely ignore the issue of climate
change and instead emphasize economic development and growth.
For example, The Master Plan of Moscow 2025 advances a vision of
growth and spatial expansion aimed at allowing its population to
enjoy a standard of living comparable to that of other major
European capitals; while the vision of Beijing Master Plan, 2004
2020 is to build Beijing into a World City and to promote
Beijing as an internationally inuential city through the services
it provides. Similarly, the vision of Master Plan for Delhi 2021 is to
make Delhi a global metropolis and a world-class city, where all
the people would be engaged in productive work with a better
quality of life, living in a sustainable environment (see also
Isaksen and Stokke, 2014). The Amman Plan and Tel Aviv Plan dismiss climate change issues altogether. The climate change issues
were not even mentioned in these plans.
3. Mitigation and adaptation: aspirations
The levels of GHG reduction proposed by the plans range from 0
to 70%, as reected in Table 1. The Paris Action Plan is very ambitious, aiming for a 25% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in
the city (in comparison to European targets of 20%) by 2020. The
London Plan strives for a 60% reduction in Londons overall carbon
dioxide emissions, to bring them below their 1990 levels, by 2025.
In 2008, Barcelona signed the European Unions Covenant of
Mayors, committing to reduce CO2 emissions by 20%, to increase
energy efciency by 20%, and to ensure that 20% of its energy will
come from renewable sources all by 2020. In 2007, New York City
set the goal of a 30% reduction in citywide GHG emissions by 2030,
and since then the city has achieved a 19% reduction from its 2005
baseline. New York City also updated its targets and is now committed to a pathway to 80 (80% carbon emission reductions) by
2050 (The City of New York, 2013). Unlike the Paris, London, and
Barcelona plans, the plans for Beijing, Delhi, and Amman provide
no data regarding emissions reduction. The Delhi Plan offers no target gure for GHG reduction and only acknowledges that the air
quality has been responsible for a number of respiratory diseases,
heart ailments, eye irritation, asthma, etc.
Furthermore, as shown in Table 1, none of the plans take adaptation measures seriously. Paris, London, and New York have all
advanced limited adaptation measures, and none of the cities have
adequately addressed the uncertainties relating to climate change
and their expected local impacts, despite their recognition of the
dramatic threats they pose to their cities (Parr, 2015). Londons
plan acknowledges that by the 2050s, the city could see an increase
of up to 2.7 in mean summer temperature, a 15% increase in mean
winter rainfall, and an 18% decrease in mean summer rainfall over
the 19611990 baseline. The plan also recognizes that heat
impacts will have major implications for the quality of life in
London, particularly for those with the fewest resources and living
in accommodation least adapted to cope, and that the city will
also witness an increased probability of ooding, with higher sea
levels, higher and more frequent tidal surges, signicant increases
in peak ows of the Thames and other rivers, and the potential for
more surface water ooding. As it stands, there are already 1.5 million people and 480,000 properties in the oodplain.

42

Y. Jabareen / Geoforum 63 (2015) 4043

Table 1
Mitigation and adaptation measures according to city plans.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
*
**

City

Population- 2014 City proper**

New York City

Sao Paulo
Los Angeles
Paris
Rome
London
Barcelona
Cape Town
Tokyo
Dakha
Bangkok
Jakarta
Amman
Moscow
Cairo
Beijing
Riyadh
Delhi
Karachi
Manila

8,336,6971
11,152,968*
3,857,799
2, 243,833 (10,460,118)*
2,626,553
8,278,251
326,460
987,007
8,945,695
5,333,571
8,305,218
9,607,787
2,324,449
11,918,057
7,248,671
19,610,000
4,087,152
12,877,470*
9,339,023
1,652,171

Energy

GHG Emissions Goal

Adaptation
measures

Renewable

% Reduction

Target year

Yes

20% (2020) 60%

69%
35%
25%
20%
15%
20%
10% (2020)
20%/ (2008)
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

0
20%
35%
70% 25%
20%
60%
23.45%
15%
25%
33%
20%
30%
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0

(2050, baseline 2005)

2020 (baseline 2005)
2030
2050 2020 (baseline 2004)

Limited

No
X

Limited
X

2025
2020
2020
2020

(baseline 1990)
(baseline 2008)
(baseline 2000)
(2008)

2007
2030 [2005]

Limited
X
X
X

Limited
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X

Urban agglomeration.
Source: UN-United Nations. (2014). 2013 Demographic Yearbook. New York.

4. Conclusions and Policy Implications

The above review of our sample of recent plans from selected
cities enables us to draw the following tentative closing points:
1. Climate change and its resulting uncertainties must challenge
the concepts, procedures, and scope of conventional approaches
to planning our cities (Jabareen, 2015). Simply put, it has
become too risky to continue business as usual: cities must
undergo a paradigm shift in the way in which they plan their
futures. Therefore, city plans should become extremely signicant tools for coping with risk in general and the risk stemming
from climate change in particular. Practically speaking, city
planning serves as a synergetic vehicle that brings mitigation,
adaptation, social, economic, and spatial policies into integrated
focus within a single statutory plan.
2. Hitherto, the vast majority of our contemporary cities continue to employ traditional planning approaches, and the
recent plans produced in Amman, Moscow, Delhi, and
Beijing apply the same land-use and zoning strategies of early
modern planning dating back to the rst half of the 20th century. Indeed, the vast majority of cities have ignored anticipated threats, vulnerabilities, and uncertainties stemming
from climate change.
3. Cities that take climate change seriously have applied a broad
range of mitigation measures aimed at GHG emissions reduction. In this way, mitigation appears to be an easy-to-tackle task
for many of the plans. Nonetheless, the cities have been neither
creative nor productive in the realm of adaptation. That is to
say, notwithstanding a number of slight differences between
the cities surveyed, all have failed in their approaches to adaptation. This leads to the conclusion that our cities are not doing
all they can to fortify themselves against uncertainties, climate
change, and natural and environmental hazards. Furthermore,
because they are neither properly nor effectively fullling the
critical role they should be playing in coping with the risk and
uncertainties facing their own residents, our cities (and particularly the larger ones) may end up being deathtraps for millions
of residents when disasters occur.

4. In many countries, decisions are made at the national level and

the inuence of cities can be severely limited. Moreover, in
many cases, local governments are not the provisioning stakeholders for critical services, as in the case of power utilities,
which are not operated by most local governments (see also
Smucker et al., 2015; Popke et al., in press). Cities need to
advance planning horizons and ensure that they are being
addressed by service providers and the upper echelons of local
government. Local governments only exercise explicit control
over the activities for which they are directly responsible,
which typically account for only a small percentage of a citys
overall GHG emissions.
5. A few cities, such as London, New York City, and Paris, have
taken adaptation more seriously than their national governments, and the explicit statement of their views on the matter represents the true value of a broad planning document.
Yet, most cities regard pandemics, street violence, poverty,
and economic instability as greater concerns than climate
change.
In sum, even though, urban plans possess an unrivaled potential
to cope with the impacts of climate change, they still overlooked
by cities as well as by planning theory and practices. This neglect,
to iterate, potentially risks the lives of millions on urban dwellers
as disasters, such as the most recent earthquake in Kathmandu,
Nepal, testify.

References
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Opportunities.
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IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007. Fourth Assessment
Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, MA.

Y. Jabareen / Geoforum 63 (2015) 4043

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Popke, J., Curtis, S., Gamble Do. W., 2014. A social justice framing of climate change
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agricultural landscape. Geoforum (in press).

43

Rosenzweig, C., Solecki, W.D., Hammer, S.A., Mehrotra, S., 2011. Climate Change and
Cities: First Assessment Report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network.
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